Challenging productivity

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) recently released its latest UK labour productivity statistics, which show that output produced per-hour-worked continued to flat line.  Many commentators consider that productivity growth will be the key challenge for the UK economy over the next five years.  

However, the headline statistic masks considerable variation in productivity growth between different sectors of the economy.  In the second of our latest set of Insights: Challenging productivity, we argue that understanding the causes of these differences could provide the answer to unlocking productivity growth in the UK.  

Relatedly it suggests methods that firms could use to benchmark and improve their own productivity and in doing so, their competitive advantage.